A Real Debate on Taxes

By Alicia H. Munnell

In this year’s presidential campaign, the Republican candidates have made it very clear that increased revenue should play no part in the effort to restore fiscal balance. As a result, all the balancing is accomplished through cuts to programs, including those that many retirees rely on, such as Medicare. Moreover, a recent analysis of Governor Romney’s tax proposals by the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center concludes that his revenue-neutral changes would provide large cuts to high-income households and raise taxes on middle- and lower-income households.

As described on Romney’s website, his tax plan would extend the 2001-03 tax cuts, reduce individual income tax rates by 20 percent, eliminate taxation of investment income for most taxpayers, eliminate the estate tax, reduce the corporate income tax rate, and repeal the alternative minimum tax and the high-income taxes enacted in the 2010 health-reform legislation. These changes would reduce revenue by about $450 billion in 2015. Governor Romney and his advisers say that the ultimate plan would include proposals to broaden the base by eliminating tax breaks and incentives so that his overall tax proposals would be revenue neutral.

Paul Ryan’s plan is quite similar. He calls for collapsing the income tax rates into brackets, 10 and 25 percent, which represents a cut in the highest marginal rate that’s even larger than is called for by the Romney plan. He also proposes making up the lost revenue by eliminating unspecified tax breaks.

Because the tax incentives to be eliminated are unspecified, the Tax Policy Center analysts needed to make some assumptions. First, consistent with statements by Romney and supporters, they assume that provisions to encourage saving — such as preferential rates on capital gains; tax preferences for retirement, health and educational savings accounts; exemption of interest on state and local bonds; the exclusion of capital gains in home sales; and the saver’s credit — would not be eliminated. Second, they eliminate tax breaks by “starting at the top.” That is, they first eliminate tax benefits for the highest-income group (deductions for charitable contributions, mortgage interest and state and local taxes, and exclusions of health insurance and other fringe benefits from income) and then work their way down the income distribution until they have recouped all the revenue lost so that the tax cuts are revenue-neutral.

The key finding is that (once tax breaks to encourage saving are off the table) the total value of the tax breaks that these taxpayers are now enjoying (i.e., the amount that could potentially be eliminated under the proposed tax changes) is smaller than their gain from the rate cuts. As a result, the arithmetic requires that part of the burden for the high-income rate cuts shift onto middle- and low-income taxpayers. That is, once savings incentives are off the table, it is not possible to design a revenue-neutral plan that does not reduce tax burdens paid by high-income taxpayers, even if the reductions are implemented in the most progressive way possible.

As shown in the table, the after-tax income of those earning more than $1,000,000 would increase by 4 percent in this revenue-neutral exercise, while that of those with $75,000 to $100,000 would decline by 1.2 percent.

The fact that the existing tax system becomes more regressive under Romney’s tax proposals is interesting, but somewhat small potatoes compared with the fact that he and Paul Ryan envision no role for increased revenue in closing the fiscal gap. As a result, the entire burden falls on program cuts, which fundamentally affects the lives of low- and middle-income families. Now, that is something to have a debate about!

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About Encore

Encore looks at the changing nature of retirement, from new rules and guidelines for financial security to the shifting identities, needs and priorities of people saving for and living in retirement. Our lead blogger is editor Matthew Heimer, and frequent contributors include editor Amy Hoak, writer Catey Hill, and MarketWatch columnists Elizabeth O’Brien, Robert Powell and Andrea Coombes. Encore also features regular commentary from The Wall Street Journal retirement columnists Glenn Ruffenach and Anne Tergesen and the Director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, Alicia H. Munnell.